Understanding the Ego

The word ‘ego’ is one that is used quite widely in spiritual discourses. Yet sometimes it seems ambiguous as to what exactly it means. Well that isn’t an accurate statement; it’s not that the definition is ambiguous, its that the word itself seems misconstructed, and doesn’t really serve its purpose.

The most popular way of understanding the word, it would seem, is to say that the ego represents the energies within an individual that has been knotted up in some way, and is not flowing freely. And we say this to be out of sync with the Universe because it is not in alignment with the free-flowing nature of the Universe.

But somehow in the framing of a spiritual discourse, it is often said that one must subdue the ego, or transcend the ego; and this is most often said because the greatest challenge that the ego poses is that of the individual trying to dis-identify with it. But to say that one must transcend the ego or subdue the ego, also implies that one must believe that the energy that it is composed of doesn’t really exist; when in fact that also is a distortion.

To make the word a noun, and make it into an object that is undesirable, only adds to the challenges that an individual must face. Because it is not so much that one must transcend it, as it is that one must become aware that one is “not it” despite the fact that it might exist as a potential driving force in ones life.

For if we fail to recognize this, we run the risk of thinking we have transcended the ego, when it is in fact running our lives subconsciously.

It seems that this concept requires a new way to be framed… one that doesn’t make “transcending the ego” a final state, but a “every-moment-presence” that requires our constant attention. After all, our role as a consciousness is to be conscious to everything that arises in our awareness. An alternative way to convey this concept might be “ego-potential,” but I’m sure someone can come up with a much more elegant way to put that across.

Further – using this line of reasoning – one could say that enlightenment is not a state to be achieved, but a state to be sustained. One alternative might be to say “enlightening-ment.”